Quebec religious symbols ban will apply to English schools until appeal decided

The Quebec Court of Appeal will not allow the English Montreal School Board to hire teachers who wear religious symbols while an appeal of a lower court decision on Quebec’s secularism law is being decided.

Quebec Court of Appeal has ruled that the EMSB did not sufficiently prove how applying the secularism law, known as Bill 21, would be harmful.

Quebec’s English school boards will now have to abide by Bill 21 until challenges to the law can be heard in court, which could take years.

The English Montreal School Board requested that it and other English school boards be exempt from provisions of Bill 21, like banning hiring teachers who wear religious symbols. This was rejected by the province’s Court of Appeal. In April, Quebec Superior Court had ruled in favour of the English school boards but this was appealed by the province’s attorney general.

The EMSB argued its culture was rooted in promoting diversity and preventing the school board from hiring a diverse range of teachers was threatening that culture.

The board noted in the original decision that the Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard accepted testimony from an expert witness who found that limiting teachers from diverse backgrounds would be likely to harm students both educationally and economically.

In a statement Tuesday evening, the EMSB said it “disappointed” in the decision. EMSB Chair Joe Ortona said that a “favourable judgment would also have given the EMSB much-needed hiring options at a time when there is a province-wide teacher shortage.”

Justice Frédéric Bachand wrote in the ruling, “I find that the applicants have not discharged their burden to show, through precise, clear and concrete facts, that the filing of the appeal is likely to cause serious or irreparable prejudice.”

Quebec Justice Minister Simon Join-Barrette wrote on Twitter that there should be no exceptions to Bill 21, “The law will continue to apply, as it should, for everyone and throughout Quebec. It is a victory for the secularism of the state, a value that we will defend to the end.”

Justice Bachand said that the EMSB’s claim that putting off hiring new teachers with religious symbols would interfere with the culture they maintain is an overstatement. Bachand believes that the school board’s objectives in relation to diversity can still be furthered in other respects and that there has been no proof that hiring teachers who wear religious symbols is crucial to filling the teacher shortage.

-With files from the Canadian Press